Glossary
Chinese Naming and Divination Glossary
Core English explanations for terms commonly used across 1518.
Reference boundary
1518 pages explain Chinese naming and folk-culture systems as structured references. They are not professional advice.
Five-Grid Name Numerology
A modern Chinese-name scoring framework that maps stroke counts into five structural grids and 81 number meanings.
Heaven Grid (Tian Ge)
The number derived from the surname, standing for ancestry and inherited conditions; it cannot be changed and mainly joins the Three-Talent combination.
Personality Grid (Ren Ge)
The core number of a name, read as the person's character and main life phase; name reading starts here.
Earth Grid (Di Ge)
The number from the given name, traditionally governing early life (before ~38) and ties to children.
External Grid (Wai Ge)
The number for social relations and outside support — how well one gets along away from home.
Total Grid (Zong Ge)
The sum of all name strokes, traditionally governing mid-to-late life; weighted highest together with the Personality Grid.
Three-Talent Pattern (San Cai)
The Five-Element relation among Heaven, Personality and Earth grids — whether the name's inner structure flows or clashes; judged separately from number luck.
81-Number Table
The traditional 1–81 table where each number carries an auspicious or inauspicious meaning; numbers above 81 subtract 80 and are re-checked.
BaZi
The Four Pillars system built from birth year, month, day, and hour; 1518 uses it as a deterministic cultural reference layer.
Four Pillars (Si Zhu)
Year, month, day and hour each paired with a Heavenly Stem and Earthly Branch — eight characters in total, the factual base of all BaZi reasoning; months follow true solar terms.
Day Master (Ri Zhu)
The Heavenly Stem of the day pillar, representing the person; every other character is read by its relation to the Day Master.
Ten Gods (Shi Shen)
The ten relation types between the other characters and the Day Master (wealth, officer, resource, output, peer …) — the main vocabulary of BaZi reading.
Useful Element
The Five Elements direction that a traditional BaZi reading treats as supportive for the chart.
Luck Cycles (Da Yun)
Ten-year phases derived from the month pillar; whether a decade flows well is read from the cycle's relation to the useful elements, together with the year.
Annual Year (Liu Nian)
The current year's stem-branch interacting with the natal chart and luck cycle — the BaZi frame behind 'this year's outlook'.
Na Yin
A poetic Five-Element label assigned to each of the sixty stem-branch pairs (e.g. 'Gold in the Sea'); used mainly for year-fate flavor and compatibility reference.
True Solar Time
Birth time corrected by the birthplace's longitude and the equation of time; careful charts convert before setting the hour pillar.
Spouse Palace
The Earthly Branch of the day pillar, read as the position of marriage and partner; compatibility weighs the two charts' day-branch relations most heavily.
Four-Dimension Compatibility
1518's compatibility score: zodiac affinity (20), day-stem harmony (20), spouse palace (30) and element complementarity (30) — the method is public and verifiable.
Ascendant (Rising Sign)
The sign rising on the eastern horizon at birth (changes every ~2 hours; needs exact time and place), shaping first impressions and instinctive style.
Moon Sign
The sign the Moon occupied at birth, governing emotions, attachment and the private self; often more telling than the Sun sign in close relationships.
Houses
The chart's twelve life areas (1st self, 7th partnership, 10th career …); planets are the actors, houses the stage. 1518 uses whole-sign houses.
Aspects
Specific angles between planets (conjunction 0°, sextile 60°, trine 120°, square 90°, opposition 180°) describing how their energies interact; hard aspects mark themes to integrate, not doom.
Personal Trigram (Ming Gua)
A personal trigram from birth year (switching at Start of Spring) and gender, splitting people into East and West groups and fixing their favorable directions.
Eight Wandering Stars
The Eight Mansions system's four auspicious and four harsh stars laid onto the eight directions from the personal or house trigram; bedrooms on good stars, storage on bad.
Flying Stars (Xuan Kong)
A Feng Shui method that charts nine stars from the construction period and facing; the same house reads differently in different twenty-year periods.
Period 9
The 2024–2043 twenty-year cycle (Fire element) in the three-cycle/nine-period calendar; charts are set by move-in or major renovation year.
24 Mountains
The compass ring dividing 360° into 24 sectors of 15° each, used to state a house's sitting and facing precisely.
Lu Ban Ruler
The traditional carpenter's ruler cycling eight fields (wealth, illness … root); dimensions landing on auspicious fields are preferred for doors and furniture.
Chief Star and Duty Door
The lead star and duty door of a Qi Men chart — the first things read for overall momentum and timing of a matter.
Use God (Yong Shen)
The symbol on the chart that represents the asked matter (Life Door for wealth, Six Harmony for marriage …); its palace and condition are the situation.
Three Nobles and Six Yi
The ten stems on a Qi Men chart: Yi/Bing/Ding as the auspicious 'nobles', the other six as Yi instruments; their combinations form named patterns.
Auspicious Day (Huang Dao)
A day whose duty deity is one of the six auspicious ones; date selection picks these first, then avoids days clashing one's zodiac.
Clash and Sha
The zodiac sign clashed by the day's branch (keep a low profile if it's yours) and the day's unlucky direction for groundbreaking.
Twelve Day Officers
Twelve rotating day labels (Establish, Remove, Full, Balance …), each carrying a class of do/avoid tendencies alongside the duty-deity system.
Major Arcana
The 22 trump cards (Fool to World) marking major life themes; the more that appear, the weightier the matter.
Minor Arcana
The 56 suit cards — Wands action, Cups feeling, Swords thought, Pentacles material — with ranks marking stages of a matter.
Upright and Reversed
Card orientation: upright is flowing energy, reversed is blocked, internalized or excessive — a reversal is a lesson, not a 'bad card'.
Spreads
Fixed card layouts where each position answers a sub-question (daily card, past/present/future, love, career); position meaning × card meaning is the reading.
Life Palace
The core palace of a Zi Wei chart, set from lunar month and birth hour; its main-star combination is the chart's 'factory settings' and reading always starts here.
Fourteen Main Stars
The 14 principal stars in two families (Zi Wei and Tian Fu) whose placement across the twelve palaces forms the chart's skeleton.
Four Transformations (Si Hua)
Four energies triggered by the birth-year stem — Wealth, Power, Fame, Obstacle; whichever palace they land in gets the story.
Five-Element Bureau
A bureau number (Water-2 to Fire-6) from the Life Palace's stem-branch Na Yin, fixing where Zi Wei sits and when major decades start.
Primary and Changed Hexagram
The first cast hexagram shows the present; flipping the moving lines yields the changed hexagram showing where things head. Moving lines are the fuse of change.
Moving Lines
Lines cast as old yang or old yin, marked ○/×; their position (1st to 6th) tells at which level change is happening.
Plum-Blossom Numerology
A quick casting school using numbers or the current time to derive trigrams and always exactly one moving line — light and suited to one question at a time.
Three Major Palm Lines
Life, head and heart lines — read for energy, thinking style and emotional expression; a portrait of habits, not a verdict on lifespan.
Twelve Face Palaces
The face divided into twelve zones each governing a life area (forehead career, nose wealth, chin later years), read together with feature shapes.
Life Path Number
The core number (1–9 or a master number) from summing all digits of the Gregorian birth date — a Western system independent of Chinese stroke numerology; do not mix the two.
Personal Year
The year rhythm number (1–9 cycle) from birth month + day + target year: 1 sows, 4 builds, 8 harvests, 9 closes.
Master Numbers
11, 22 and 33 are kept unreduced — intuition, grand building and healing service respectively, with both gifts and challenges amplified.
Runes
The 24 Elder Futhark characters used for one- or three-draw guidance; some symmetric runes have no reversed position.
Folk Culture Reference
1518 results are cultural and entertainment references, not medical, legal, financial, marriage, trademark, or official advice.